Slavery's Impact On the Cotton States Causes of Secession

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Slavery's Impact On the Cotton States- Slavery Decided by State or Federal?


“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
-10th amendment U.S Constitution

“Slavery has nothing whatever to do with the tremendous issues now awaiting decision. It has disappeared almost entirely from the political discussions of the day. No one mentions it in connection with our present complications.“The question which we have to meet is precisely what it would be if there were not a negro slave on American soil.””
-New York Times quoted in the Richmond Whig April 9 1861

Slavery's involvement in southern secession is often overstated because slavery was the “occasion” to witch the fight over states rights and the nature of the constitution was fought. Just as Calhoun had said of the tariff of abomination was “The occasion, rather than the real cause” that cause was federal power expansion past its constitutional limits and its encroachments upon the rights of the states.

“This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
-Richard Henry Lee 1787

“Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail.”
-John Calhoun South Carolina Senator 1831

The deep south saw the republicans as violating the 9th and 10th amendment – and Dred Scott v. Sandford 1857 Supreme Court ruling for trying to decide the fate of slavery by federal control rather than state and individual. Democratic plank 9 of the 1852 elections [and carried on to 1860] plainly stated that a attack on slavery was a attack on states rights, the two issues could not be separated. The question was, is the federal government confined to the powers in the constitution, or was it allowed to step outside of its delegated powers by the states thus nullifying the constitution and transforming the republic, into a centralized nation.

That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
-Democrat plank 9 1852

That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
-Democratic Plank 1 1852

“It has often been said that we were fighting for the perpetuation of slavery. This was not so. We were simply fighting for our right to keep slaves if we wanted to. We were fighting for state rights- rights to be allowed to make our own laws for our particular states”
-Joseph F Burke Confederate colonial


Secession and Slavery a States Rights and Constitutional Issue


“The people who say slavery had nothing to do with the war are just as wrong as the people who say slavery had everything to do with the war”
-Shelby Foote

“Slavery, although the occasion, was not the producing cause of dissolution”
-Rose Oneal Greehow- My improvement and the first year of abolition Rule in Washington 1863

“Slavery is no more the cause of this war than gold is the cause of robbery”
-Joel Parker New jersey Governor 1863

Slavery had varying degrees of influence on the deep south reasons for secession, from none at all, to the main reason. No question there were some in the south that were willing to leave the union simply to preserve slavery. The slave owner thought slavery was a constitutional, biblical, and state right. A southern slave owner would view a northern abolitionist as a foreigner who was violating their rights. In the cotton states they had more financial gain and loss riding on slavery and were more apt to maintain slavery and their economy. No better example than Mississippi. With 4 billion dollars worth of value and almost the whole economic system of the state dependent on slavery, they wished to defend their economic system that had brought them so much wealth. However even in Mississippi, slavery was not the sole cause.

“Let not slavery prove a barrier to our independence...although slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for... if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it”
-The Jackson Mississippian 1864 quoted in McPherson's Battle cry of Freedom

The south viewed slaves as any other legal property that the federal could not interfere with, if they tried to do so, it was tyrannical. Unlike today in antebellum America was at a time when the federal did not extend into the states domain and Southerners who were still of the Jeffersonian tradition well understood that if the federal was allowed to encroach on the states on the issue of slavery [or any other issue] it would continue to expand until it became a tyrannical body that no longer followed its limitations under the Constitution such as we have today.

“When all government domestic and forighn in little as in great things shall be drawn to Washington as the source of all power. It will render powerless the checks provided of one government [states] on another, and will become as vegal and oppressive as the government which we have separated”
-Thomas Jefferson

"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
--Thomas Jefferson

“I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
– Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791]

“Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
– John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774


“slavery was not the cause, but the occasion of strife...Rights of the states were the bulwarks of the liberties of the people but that emancipation by federal aggression would lead to the destruction of all other rights”
-R.L Dabney A Defense Of Virginia And The South 1867

“If the government has the right to interfere in the private affairs of white men, it can do the same with Nige$s”.
-Mr. Etheridge of Tennessee 1860 quoted in NY Herald column on the debate in the senate on “the slavery question”

It would be hard to accept that southerners were willing to leave the country they loved and fight a war simply to have slavery extended into new territories where it would simply provide more competition to southern slave states domination on cotton. In 1843 many rich southern planters and no less than Calhoun voted against Texas for statehood because they said it would reduce the price of cotton. Instead they would want a monopoly within the south. By leaving the union the south was giving up federal protection for there runaway slaves under the fugitive slave laws, as well as giving up there right to bring there slaves into the united states territories something they fought so hard for.

“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
-Confederate Major General John B. Gordon Causes of the Civil War

If the south fought only for slavery, with no connection to states rights, it only had to not fight the war. Slavery was protected and not under attack by Lincoln in the states it already existed. At any time as Lincoln promised, the south just had to lay down arms and come back into the union with slavery intact, yet they chose to fight for another cause.

“The emancipation proclamation was actually an offer permitting the south to stop fighting and return to the union by January 1st and still keep its slaves”
-John Canaan The Peninsula campaign

“Peace now would save slavery, while a continued war would obliterate the last vestiges of it”
-Raleigh newspaper July 1863 quoted in Americas Civil war Magazine

Virginia alone freed more slaves prior to civil war than NY, NJ, Pennsylvania,and New England put together. South Carolinian Mary Chestnut said slavery was a curse, yet she supported secession. She and others hoped the war would end with a “Great independent country with no slavery.” On June 1861 Mary Chestnut said “Slavery has got to go of course but they did because the issue was much deeper as it involved states rights, constitutional protection, and the nature of the union.

“When the Government of the United States disregarded and attempted to trample upon the rights of the States, Georgia set its power at defiance and seceded from the Union rather than submit to the consolidation of all power in the hands of the Central or Federal Government..her sovereignty the principles for the support of which Georgia entered into this revolution.”
-Joseph E Brown Georgia Governor 1862

In antebellum America north and south the states resisted federal expansion in various ways. The first federal vs state issue arose over the alien and sedition acts and later internal improvements, national banking, conscription, protective tariffs, land disputes, freedom of speech, free trade, state control of militia, fugitive slave laws etc. No matter what the issue states held firm to the union and fought against federal expansions. The south was doing what states north or south had done in antebellum America, resisted federal expansion past its constitutional bounds. The consequences of the new radical Republican victory over the battle of a centralized nation vs a union of states with a limited federal government has led to the modern tyrannical government that shows no regard for its supposed limitations proving Jefferson correct. See [From Union to Empire- The Political Effects of the Civil war From Union to Empire The Political Effects of the Civil war ]

“The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century; the North's had. With complete sincerity the South fought to preserve its version of the republic of the Founding Fathers--a government of limited powers that protected the rights of property, including slave property, and whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities, heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession of the Republican party, with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, free-labor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the Northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this frightening future."
-James M. McPherson Ante-bellum Southern Exceptionalism


South Carolina Secession Document
Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

South Carolina was the first state to seceded from the union. If read in full it gives a good example of slavery as a states rights issue. Slavery was an occasion that states rights were fought over, not the sole cause. The cause of dissolving the union is given right off the bat “Declared that the frequent violations of the constitution by the united sates, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union.” The document is a states rights succession document. The writers of the document wanted that to stand out, that is why the first thing noticed at a glance of the document you will see “FREE AND INDEPENDANT STATES” capitalized three times in the document to stand out. South Carolina was also letting it be known in their declaration of Independence, that it was “FREE AND INDEPANDANT STATES” and state rights, that they were declaring independence. The document goes into the history of states rights in America mentions the failure of the federal government in upholding the constitution and its interfering with states rights. South Carolina said if they were to stay in the union the “constitution will then no longer exists, equal rights of the states will be lost” and that the federal government would become its enemy. While slavery is mentioned four or five times, states rights, independent state, and state sovereignty is mentioned sixteen times. States rights are mentioned not in connection with slavery, yet slavery is always mentioned in connection with states rights. Just as southern democrats had been saying for decades in there political party planks, an attack on slavery was an attack on states rights. Just as South Carolina when it first threatened to success was over states rights, that time [1830's] over tariffs, not slavery.

 

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Western States Free or Slave?

“The one great evil, from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of Confederated Republics, but of a consolidated Democracy. It is, in face such a Government as Great Britain attempted to set over our Fathers; and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years’ struggle for independence. ....The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution — –a limited free Government– — a Government limited to those matters only, which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States.... the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. ”
-Address of South Carolina to Slave-holding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

That when the settlers in a Territory, having an adequate population, form a State Constitution, the right of sovereignty commences, and being consummated by admission into the Union, they stand on an equal footing with the people of other States, and the State thus organized ought to be admitted into the Federal Union, whether its Constitution prohibits or recognizes the institution of slavery.
-Southern Democrat Party Platform 1860

The fight over new western territories was a battle over the very nature of the federal government. Were these states coming into the union allowed their state sovereignty and states rights as had all previous states, or was the federal government allowed to violate those rights and dictate the states? Where states sovereign or subject to a federal master? The republicans and Lincoln said they would not allow new states the rights granted in the constitution to decide on the issue of slavery. What the south asked for was that these new states coming in be allowed on their own to chose. Was the federal allowed to bar slave holders and their property from entering the new territories thus giving political control to the north, ensuring their political and economic agenda? The end results the south would no longer be represented by its government and the constitution would be abolished and replaced by a democracy.


Fight Over the Expansion of Slavery- A Fight to Control the Government and Agrarians vs Industrialist

“They are now divided, between agricultural–and manufacturing, and commercial States; between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States. Their institutions and industrial pursuits, have made them, totally different peoples.”
-Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

“It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.”
-Mississippi Declaration for Causes of Secession

“The struggle over the expansion of slavery into the territories....was almost a purely political issue”
-Robert William Fogel The rise and Fall of American Slavery

The Souths primarily agrarian and agricultural lifestyle contrasted with the growing northern industrial and urban lifestyle led to difference of opinion on culture, education, religion, role of government, tariffs, trade policies, internal improvements and many other differences. There were as many factories in the north, as there were factories workers in the south. From Americans agrarian roots the south had “little dynamic change, weather through immigration, the growth of new cities or new industrial manufacturing, was allowed to come in and stir up the pot.”

[For a in depth look at the cultural, political and religious differences between agrarians and industrialist see here Southern Agrarians- did America Lose its Liberty When it Lost its Agrarian Roots? Southern Agrarians- did America Lose its Liberty When it Lost its Agrarian Roots? ]

“Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. We never want to see it otherwise. It is the freest, happiest, most independent , and, with us, the most powerful condition on earth”
-Montgomery Daily Confederation 1858

“1850's southern agrarians had mounted a counter attack against the gospel of industrialization”
-James McPherson Battle cry of freedom

“Leisure orientated agrarian society is the antithesis to materialistic northern life”
-Rapheal Semmes CSA navy commander

As argued in the book “I'll Take my Stand the south and the agrarian tradition.” The main cause of the war was the fight over western territories coming into the union. All men are created equal, so slave owners had just as much rights to go into the territories [federal owned land] as northerns did. Before the civil war northern big business and industry needed industrial workers for factories for expansion, not farmers and planters. If these states were allowed to decide on their own slave or free, than the south might maintain agrarian, free trade, policies.

“The political and economic implication of agrarian expansion westward were alarming to certain mercantile interests in the east who red the loss of their political and economic control of an expanding America”
-Merrill Jensen The New Nation Northeastern University Press

“The struggle in our territories between the free and slaveholding States, has not been a struggle for the emancipation of slaves. It has been a contest for power, between the two great sections of the Union...The Southern people, in claiming a right to settle in territories with their slaves, assert a right sanctioned by the Constitution. The Northern people, in attempting to preclude the Southern people, by the legislation of Congress from our territories, war against the Constitution. This is the declaration of the Supreme Court of the United States. If the Northern position has prevailed by the late Presidential election, as the Northern people maintain, it has overthrown the Constitution. For by this result, a party hostile both to the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court, have been placed in control of the Government. This alone would justify a dissolution of the Union....Whether all the States composing the United States, should be slaveholding or non-slaveholding States, neither the Northern nor Southern States ought to have permitted to be a question in the politics of the United States. ”
-Repot on the confederate committee of foreign affairs 1861

If they were to all become free, than northern industrialist would dominate congress and high tariffs, protective tariffs and internal improvements would rise. Both the industrialist and the southern planters backed politicians in the fight over western territories. Northern politicians thought slavery “Stifled technological progress, inhibited industrialization, and thwarted urbanization” and would lead to the “Destruction of all industry” Something had to happen.

“Professor Holt quotes Ohio Congressman Joshua Giddings explaining: “To give the south the preponderance of political power would be itself to surrender our tariff, our internal improvements [a.k.a. corporate welfare], our distribution of proceeds of public lands . . .”
-Micheal Holt The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War quoted by Thomas j Dilorenzo

“Theodore Weld declared that the South had to be wiped out because it is “the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, our commerce.”
-Clyde Wilson Professor of History at the University of South Carolina

“The game plan of northern industrialist, who were fighting not for black freedom, but for the freedom to exploit and devolve the American market...The only people who could say “free at last” after the civil war were northern industrialist and their allies”
-Lerone Vennett JR Forced into Glory Abraham Lincolns White Dream

The industrialist “hired” politicians to go anti-slavery and pro industrial expansion, fighting hard for western states to go anti slavery. Former slave trader James De Wolf became anti slavery when he started manufacturing companies. All of a sudden he wanted internal improvements and protective tariffs. The south wanted agrarian lifestyle, free trade, and states to decide on slavery. So as was said “The south had to be crushed out, it was in the way, it impeded the progress of the machine” if slavery could be abolished, than southern agrarian representation in congress would be reduced, if not

“Then the old whig economic agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and central banking, which had become the republican agenda, would continue to fail in congress”
-Thomas J Dilorenzo Lincoln Unmasked

“The more the north became industrialized, the more the need arose for stronger national government to support its growth and finical interests.” The industrialist wanted higher tariffs as well to slow the flow of trade on the Mississippi. They instead wanted trade to flow west through railroads supported by higher tariffs and internal improvements. Northern General Sherman said the civil war was a war between agriculturalist vs mechanics. Confederate General Jubal Early said Lee's army was defeated by “Steam power, railroads, mechanism, and all the resources of physical science”

The freeing of the slaves was “Only an accident in the violent clash of interests between the Industrial north and the Agricultural south”
-African American Ralph Bunche

“The south saw the attack on the issue of slavery not so much as an attempt to end slavery in the united states as much as an attempt to end southern influence in the national government”
-Walter D Kennedy Myths of American slavery

In the book Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War by Marc Egnal he said “Economics more than high moral concerns produced the civil war.” The heart of the war was economical differences growing between the protectionist, manufacturing northeast and the free trade agrarian south. In the book I'll take my stand a book on southern agrarian life, the authors argue if no other differences, the war would have still happened over industrial vs agrarian interests. The industrialist won. After the war the north profit went up 45% the south down 15%.

“Military defeat moved the scepter of wealth from the agrarian south to the industrial north”
-Robert William Fogel The Rise and Fall of American Slavery

“If the North triumphs, it is not alone the destruction of our property; it is the prelude to anarchy,infidelity, the ultimate loss of free and responsible government on this continent. It is the triumph of commerce, the banks, factories. ”
-Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson

“Southern movement was a revolt of conservatism against the modernism of the north” a “Reaction to industry.”
-E Merton Coulter The Confederate States of America Louisiana State university press

 

[Ana the Ist]

That's a lot of posting for a new member....

What is the point of all of this?

 

[Sic]

That's a lot of posting for a new member....

What is the point of all of this?

to start a discussion on an interesting topic and to tell the truth, or at least what political correctness wont allow to be heard.

 

[Ana the Ist]

to start a discussion on an interesting topic and to tell the truth, or at least what political correctness wont allow to be heard.

I was talking about how the Confederate battle flag can mean a lot of things to different people...and no one can say that a meaning is "right" or "wrong".

Yet, for some reason, you had posters on the thread making fun of the idea that the Civil war was about state's rights. From the quotes you posted, it seems like the politicians seceding said more about state's rights than they did about slavery.

Still, I think it's more about the economic divisions that led to the war. We can argue about whether or not a strong central government is necessary or if it simply defeats the purpose of the United States....but it's hard to imagine that the US would have survived without it.

 

[Sic]

I was talking about how the Confederate battle flag can mean a lot of things to different people...and no one can say that a meaning is "right" or "wrong".

Yet, for some reason, you had posters on the thread making fun of the idea that the Civil war was about state's rights. From the quotes you posted, it seems like the politicians seceding said more about state's rights than they did about slavery.

Still, I think it's more about the economic divisions that led to the war. We can argue about whether or not a strong central government is necessary or if it simply defeats the purpose of the United States....but it's hard to imagine that the US would have survived without it.

I think the flag has a historical meaning [future thread] but people who fly it [myself] might do so for various reasons. We are suppose to be tolerant of others and not judge so of course there is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" - i hope you noticed the sarcasm.


States rights were indeed a very big issue in the deep south, the major issue i would argue. For the upper south it was state sovereignty. But slavery as i showed was one [and the major but not only] issue that states rights were being fought over so they were mixed to some degree. The real issue was if the federal government was allowed to expand past its delegated powers from the states, or was it to go outside its jurisdiction. If so than it would bee in practice a government of unlimited powers and render the Constitution worthless.


That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
-Democratic Plank 1 1852

That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
-Democrat plank 9 1852


“The one great evil, from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of Confederated Republics, but of a consolidated Democracy. It is, in face such a Government as Great Britain attempted to set over our Fathers; and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years’ struggle for independence. ....The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution — –a limited free Government– — a Government limited to those matters only, which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States.... the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. ”
-Address of South Carolina to Slave-holding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

 

[Ana the Ist]

I think the flag has a historical meaning [future thread] but people who fly it [myself] might do so for various reasons. We are suppose to be tolerant of others and not judge so of course there is no such thing as "right" and "wrong" - i hope you noticed the sarcasm.


States rights were indeed a very big issue in the deep south, the major issue i would argue. For the upper south it was state sovereignty. But slavery as i showed was one [and the major but not only] issue that states rights were being fought over so they were mixed to some degree. The real issue was if the federal government was allowed to expand past its delegated powers from the states, or was it to go outside its jurisdiction. If so than it would bee in practice a government of unlimited powers and render the Constitution worthless.


That the federal government is one of limited powers, derived solely from the constitution, and the grants of power made therein ought to be strictly construed by all the departments and agents of the government; and that it is inexpedient and dangerous to exercise doubtful constitutional powers.
-Democratic Plank 1 1852

That Congress has no power under the constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the constitution; that all efforts of the abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery, or to take incipient steps in relation thereto, are calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences; and that all such efforts have an inevitable tendency to diminish the happiness of the people and endanger the stability and permanency of the Union, and ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions.
-Democrat plank 9 1852


“The one great evil, from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States. The Government of the United States is no longer the government of Confederated Republics, but of a consolidated Democracy. It is, in face such a Government as Great Britain attempted to set over our Fathers; and which was resisted and defeated by a seven years’ struggle for independence. ....The great object of the Constitution of the United States, in its internal operation, was, doubtless, to secure the great end of the Revolution — –a limited free Government– — a Government limited to those matters only, which were general and common to all portions of the United States. All sectional or local interests were to be left to the States.... the limitations in the Constitution have been swept away; and the Government of the United States has become consolidated, with a claim of limitless powers in its operations. ”
-Address of South Carolina to Slave-holding States Convention of South Carolina 1860

I totally understand that argument...it's not at all that different from the one used to protect gun control these days. The idea that the government shouldn't interfere, that each state should have control of the laws, probably made sense in the times of the founders.

You have to remember that many of those men grew up as colonists. They saw themselves as British in name only. They saw the British government as a tyrannical force that governed from far away....and knew nothing about the realities of the colonies.

In their minds, this was obviously wrong....as each locality knew what was best for it's people. How could the crown know what was best for Pennsylvania from all the way across the world?

So they gave power to localities....called states....when they formed their government in th Articles of Confederation. It was a total disaster. It ignored the fact that in many ways...these states were tied together both economically and socially

So the Constitution was born.

It limited the power of federal government...because they still felt like being ruled from afar by a powerful central government was a bad thing.....but it fixed some of the problems the Articles of Confederation had.

By the time of Lincoln, the economic ties were even stronger. Railroads and steamboats had made travel faster....and allowed goods to move across the vast American landscape more quickly. If each state held different laws, it would just have slowed economic growth....and discouraged people from leaving the large coastal port cities for the inland frontier.

No...a strong central government which oversees the individual states made more sense. It may not have been what the founders intended....it may even have been what they feared....but it was the direction we were heading all the same.

I'd argue that we would have never been able to compete with European industrial nations as a bunch of squabbling states anyway.

 

[Sic]

I totally understand that argument...it's not at all that different from the one used to protect gun control these days. The idea that the government shouldn't interfere, that each state should have control of the laws, probably made sense in the times of the founders.

You have to remember that many of those men grew up as colonists. They saw themselves as British in name only. They saw the British government as a tyrannical force that governed from far away....and knew nothing about the realities of the colonies.

In their minds, this was obviously wrong....as each locality knew what was best for it's people. How could the crown know what was best for Pennsylvania from all the way across the world?

So they gave power to localities....called states....when they formed their government in th Articles of Confederation. It was a total disaster. It ignored the fact that in many ways...these states were tied together both economically and socially

So the Constitution was born.

It limited the power of federal government...because they still felt like being ruled from afar by a powerful central government was a bad thing.....but it fixed some of the problems the Articles of Confederation had.

By the time of Lincoln, the economic ties were even stronger. Railroads and steamboats had made travel faster....and allowed goods to move across the vast American landscape more quickly. If each state held different laws, it would just have slowed economic growth....and discouraged people from leaving the large coastal port cities for the inland frontier.

No...a strong central government which oversees the individual states made more sense. It may not have been what the founders intended....it may even have been what they feared....but it was the direction we were heading all the same.

I'd argue that we would have never been able to compete with European industrial nations as a bunch of squabbling states anyway.

I would say it still makes sense, even more so, decentralization can do so much to help our current political situation imo. I disagree with your opinions on economics and could reference plenty of books that would argue the opposite of what you are claiming if your interested. I do agree that is the way we were heading before the war and the reason the south left. But since that is not really the topic but political opinions, i shall not delve into that one here. I am libertarian minded if your interested.